


Door+Lie

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Jack Dalton (MacGyver 2016), Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 13:12:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16682260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: When things go very wrong, very fast, on Mac and Jack's infiltration mission, Mac knows that for both of them to get out alive, one of them will need to be left behind. And there's no question which of them Mac will choose to stay.





	Door+Lie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_another_outcast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_outcast/gifts).



> I had an amazing time writing this for my awesome and talented fellow writer just_another_outcast!

Jack would laugh if he didn’t need every molecule of oxygen in his lungs for pushing his aching legs to go a little faster.  _ This is straight out of a B-grade spy flick.  _ Thick glass doors keep slamming shut just as he and Mac run through them. 

At least it’s keeping the guards with big guns from shooting them. The facility’s security may be state of the art, but apparently there’s still nothing that beats some giant goons with semiautomatics. They were all over Mac and Jack as soon as Jack accidentally tripped the server room alarm. They’ve got Riley’s decryption flashdrive plugged into the main system, and in a matter of minutes Phoenix will have enough on these guys to put them away for a  _ long _ time, but that’s not going to do them any good if they don’t get out of here. 

Jack would also be gloating if he didn’t need all that oxygen. Mac is actually, for once, getting tired. He’s panting almost as much as Jack is and is bent over slightly like he’s got a stitch in his side.  _ When we get back to Riles and the van, I’m gonna tease him about being an old man now.  _ Mac’s never lost an opportunity to make a dig about Jack’s age when the older agent finds himself running out of steam.

But they have to get out first, and that last door is closing too fast… 

“Go! I gotta plan but I need you on that side to make it work!” Mac gasps, and then Jack feels a hand between his shoulder blades and he’s stumbling through the gap just as the doors close. 

He shouts into his comm, “Okay what’s this great plan of yours?” as he turns back to the door, and then stops, feeling the adrenaline draining out of his system in an icy rush. 

Mac’s kneeling on the white tile floor of the hallway, panting. It looks like he fell after he pushed Jack. But he should be back on his feet by now… 

Mac staggers upright, slamming one hand against the glass for support. When he moves, Jack’s stomach drops at the sickening sight of a red handprint slowly bleeding trails of liquid to the floor. 

“Mac…” The kid tears out his comm, throws it to the floor, and stomps on it with surprising strength. Jack pounds uselessly on the glass, yelling, as Mac stumbles to the wall, hand leaving smears along the door the whole way. 

Mac jams his knife into the door’s access panel, and there’s a flicker of sparks, a frantic beeping noise, and a massive clunk as the failsafe systems for the door locks click into place. 

This was the final set of doors, the thickest ones. Jack doesn’t have enough left in his clip to shoot through them. He knows exactly what Mac’s doing; trapping the guards on the inside. Away from Jack. With him.

_ NO, NO, NO. _ Jack’s seen this play out in his nightmares a dozen times. Trapped helplessly, forced to watch as his kid is tortured, or murdered, or just bleeds out in front of him.  _ He doesn’t deserve to die alone. Not after all he’s been through! _ Jack wants to scream at the unfairness of the universe.  _ At least let us die together! _

The kid collapses, looking at him with those damn puppy eyes. He’s scared. If Jack had to guess, Mac didn’t let himself think about anything but protecting Jack until he was done. And now he’s letting the fact that he just  _ locked himself into a building with a bunch of people who want to kill him, and he’s all alone, _ sink in. 

“Jack, run,” the kid mouths, and then his eyes flicker closed just as the guards race around the corner.

Jack knows the kid stands a better chance of living if Jack makes himself scarce. If Mac’s the only one available to interrogate, these people will have a vested interest in keeping him alive. If they catch both Mac and Jack, they might decide trying to help the kid is a waste of time.  _ If they only have one person, he’s a valuable source of information, or a bargaining chip. _ Jack hates this, but he knows sometimes cold logic has to come into play.

So Jack runs, every bit of his heart rebelling against going further and further from the boy bleeding out behind him. 

* * *

Mac knows he’s not going to make it the second the white-hot pain burns through his side. Every step is a struggle. He  _ might  _ be able to get out those doors, but even if he does, he’ll just slow them down, let the men chasing them catch up to him and Jack because there is no way Jack will leave him.

If he wants to live, he has to let Jack get out. It’s the only chance they have. But if he lets himself waver, even for a second, he’ll decide it’s better for Jack to be here with him.  _ You have to keep Jack safe. He’ll come back for you. _

He shoves Jack through the door, watching the glass slam shut behind him, wanting to cry at the immediate feeling of separation. Just that barrier between them feels wrong. He watches Jack spin around, confused, and then sees the dawning horror in the man’s face. He can’t look at Jack while he drags himself to his feet, while he stumbles to the wall, while he destroys the door lock panel to make sure no one else can open it. 

Only when he sinks back to the floor does he look up. There’s no color in Jack’s face, and there’s a hardness in his face, a helpless anger and desperation. “Jack, run,” Mac whispers. Because the guards behind him aren’t the only ones this place has. 

Mac watches until Jack disappears into the darkness.  _ Please be safe. You have to be. _ He didn’t do this just for Jack to be caught.

He doesn’t even fight back when someone grabs his arms and drags him to his feet. He’s too weak for a struggle, and it wouldn’t do any good. There are too many men here. And if he makes too much trouble, they might decide he’s not worth leaving alive. 

He knows exactly why Jack left him. He wanted Jack to leave.  _ If they caught both of us they might use me against him. Or they might decide they only wanted to keep one of us.  _ But that doesn’t change the ache in his chest that has nothing to do with the bullet wound oozing blood down his side and leg.

He wants Jack. 

They’re supposed to be together, no matter what. “ _ You go kaboom, I go kaboom.” _ But now Mac is hurt and frightened and Jack’s not here to help him. He knows Jack must feel just as horrible at the separation; he’s probably furious with himself for not realizing what Mac was doing, angry that Mac pushed him out, upset that Mac wanted him to save himself. Because Jack’s always said his job is to take a bullet for Mac if that’s necessary. 

Mac’s barely aware of what’s happening. He hears yelling, feels hands on his wound that are far too rough and careless to be Jack’s, and he’s dimly aware that someone, maybe him, is screaming. And then it all goes black. 

* * *

Jack stumbles through the trees, back toward Riley and the van. He needs her help now. He has to get back in there, but now that everyone’s on alert he can’t just run in and start searching the place. He needs to know exactly where they took Mac.

He wonders how much she heard over comms, if she’s as panicked as he is.  _ She didn’t see the blood.  _

He thinks he’s far enough from any hostiles now that he can risk verbal communication. “Riley! Do you have access to their system yet?”

“Almost. It’s 95% loaded,” Riley says automatically, then her voice starts to shake. “Jack, what happened?”

“Mac…” Is all Jack can choke out.  _ He’s  _ still trying to process it. “That self-sacrificing idiot…” He swallows hard. “He trapped himself inside the base. He’s hurt, Ri, and I couldn’t help him.”

He hears the frantic inhale. “He got shot when we were trying to get away. He pushed me out the doors and then…” 

He hears what might be a controlled sniffle from Riley. “Is he…”

“He was alive. But he was losing so much blood, Riles.” Jack feels his stomach roll at the memory of that crimson handprint. “I have to get him back.”

“We’re going to find him, Jack. We will.” Riley’s already typing. Jack can hear her fingers absolutely flying as she tries to salvage the situation. And then the trees clear and he can see the van ahead of him, and the door opens to reveal Riley’s worried face, and the muzzle of a gun glinting in the moonlight. When she sees it’s only Jack, she lowers the gun and begins to cry.

* * *

When Mac wakes up, he’s alone. There’s no Jack to crack “sleeping beauty” jokes, or to hold his hand when the pain hits a second after awareness does. Mac curls into himself on the floor, breathing through clenched teeth until the agony subsides into something manageable.

He doesn’t really want to look at his wound, but  he can’t afford to ignore it. When he pulls up the blood-sodden edge of a shirt that used to be blue, he feels sick. He can’t see the hole, but he knows it was a fairly close-range through and through. His back probably isn’t too much the worse for wear, entry wounds are smaller and they don’t bleed quite as much, especially at close range if the bullet’s still hot enough to partially cauterize the edges. But the exit wound is bleeding through whatever pads of bandages were hastily taped onto it. There’s blood all over the floor; he can’t really see it well in the dim light of whatever little concrete box they stuffed him in, but he can feel it under his hands, soaking his pants, spreading across the ground.

He lies back, pressing his hands to the wound, feeling tears leaking down his cheeks at the firey pain. Normally he doesn’t have to do this himself. Jack is there with strong steady hands that don’t shake, that aren’t weak and wobbly from blood loss and pain. Jack doesn’t stop pushing when the pain gets worse, not like Mac can feel himself doing. Logically he knows he shouldn’t but it hurts  _ so much _ and his body is rebelling at making the pain worse.

Mac shivers. It’s selfish and wrong to want Jack to be here suffering with him. But he just wants Jack  _ so badly _ . It’s cold in this room, and dark, and he wonders how long it will be before someone arrives to interrogate him. If they don’t hurry up, he might be so incoherent from blood loss that it will be a waste of their time. 

He curls in on himself, shivering, soaked in his own blood, and tries not to cry.  _ Jack will come back. He will. He’s not going to leave me here. _

* * *

Jack doesn’t mean to hurt Riley’s feelings. He knows snapping at her won’t make her be able to work any faster. But it’s hard to remember that when every second it takes her to hack into the facility’s security means another second that Mac could be bleeding out, tortured, killed.

Jack shifts restlessly in his chair. There’s a stack of Mac’s paperclips on the van shelf, twisted into an old computer reel, a door with a handle, a lions’ head that closely resembles this group’s logo. 

Jack can’t even look at them. He needs Mac back in his hands, now. No, not now. Ten minutes ago. 

And then Riley makes a quiet exclamation of success and leans so Jack can see her rig. There are ten images on her screen, the video flashing at an accelerated pace. “There you are!” Jack sees them running down the hall, Mac shoving him, falling, slamming his hand against that door as he tries to stand. There’s something horrible about seeing it in black and white. It doesn’t capture the sickening crimson of the blood. It looks almost fake. Like this was a dream. 

And then Mac’s dragged away, an awful thick black line spreading behind his limp feet.  _ That’s so much blood. Oh God.  _

They lose track of him for a moment until Riley picks up the image on another camera. Mac’s pulled into a small room, and someone follows the guards holding a box with a first aid cross on it. Jack barely feels any relief. Most commercial kits are designed for dealing with workplace accidents. Even a devious tech company that employs armed guards probably doesn’t really have the equipment to properly deal with a bullet wound. Probably no one has the training either. 

When the men leave, they don’t take Mac with them. Riley speeds up the video again; it doesn’t have much further to go before it catches up. And Mac hasn’t been moved since. Jack tries not to think of a bad reason for that.

“Riley, do you have what we need?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go.” Riley mirrors her rig to a more portable tablet to keep tabs on Mac’s location, slips her own gun in her belt, and follows Jack out of the van. 

* * *

Mac can’t tell if the room has gotten darker or if he’s starting to fade. It feels colder too, and he knows none of this is good.  _ Did they forget about me? Are they going to leave me here to die? _ He’s not sure if it’s worse to be tortured or forgotten about.

And then the door opens, and he doesn’t have to wonder, because whatever they do is going to make the pain so much worse, and if they left him alone he could at least die semi-comfortably, if he could just stop shivering so much. 

The person who comes in is a tall, stocky woman, Mac can only see her silhouette in the door, but he thinks it must be Cassandra Jenkins, the tech company’s CEO. The one who’s using her state of the art drones to collect data for whatever foreign government is willing to pay her enough money.

She leans down beside him, glancing at the blood-covered floor, clothing and hands. “Oh dear. They told me you were injured, but I didn’t imagine it would be this...drastic.” She sounds almost concerned, almost sympathetic. 

Jenkins crouches down, running a hand through Mac’s hair in an oddly comforting gesture. He shivers, because it isn’t Jack. Only Jack should do that when Mac is hurt. Maybe Riley or Bozer or Matty, but they don’t really show affection that way. This woman reminds him too much of Murdoc, with her soft voice and false kindness.

“It would be such a shame to let you die, Angus MacGyver,” She whispers. He cringes.  _ How does she know my name? _ A soft, cruel smile spreads across her face. “Did you really think someone with the entire intelligence community at her fingertips wouldn’t know who you are?”

Mac tries to lift his head but that’s too much effort, and his voice cracks when he tries to retort with something smart.

The woman puts a finger on his lips with a gentle shushing gesture. “Now, now, you should save your strength. Unless you plan on telling me what you and your team were doing here.”

Mac chokes on the words. “Won’t...can do whatever...won’t tell…”

“Oh, I have no intention of torturing you. The woman leans down. “I’ve always taken to heart the old cliche that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. So no torture, sweetheart.” She cups his cheek in one hand, seemingly oblivious to the blood.

Mac shivers. He doesn’t like where this is going. Not at all. 

“No, I’m not going to hurt you. But if you tell me what I want to know, I’ll make sure someone take care of this.” She tugs at the bandages, frowning. “This looks painful. And you look so cold…” She rests a hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently. Mac wants to pull away from her hand but the warmth feels good,  _ I’m so cold.. _ . “You help me, I’ll help you.”

Mac shakes his head as much as he can, cringing away from her touch. 

“I don’t know if you understand the situation. Without my help, you’re going to die.” Jenkins stands up, wiping her hands clean on Mac’s shirt. “It’s your choice. Live, or die?”

Mac spits.

“Have it your way, then.” She slams the door behind her, and Mac’s left alone again to the cold and darkness and pain.

* * *

Riley directs them with the building schematics she downloaded to the air vent in the roof closest to the place Mac was locked up. They’ll have to go down two more hallways to get there, but Jack doesn’t care. He leaves Riley on the roof, waiting with a rope and carabiner to haul the two of them up when he gets Mac back.

He tells her that’s the only reason he’s leaving her up there. But in all honesty, he doesn’t want her down here for a host of other ones too. He doesn’t want her to see Mac lying cold and dead on the floor, if that’s how Jack finds him. He doesn’t want her to be abandoned in his rage-fuled revenge if that is what he finds. He doesn’t want to leave her to fend for herself while he cuts a path of carnage through this place. Doesn’t want her to either watch him die or see him come back with the eyes of a cold-blooded killer and other men’s blood on his hands. He doesn’t want to lose her too.

There are two guards outside the door of the room Mac’s in. Jack takes them both down with one clean headshot. He’s always been good at that. The door lock takes another bullet. There are quieter ways to do this, but that’s Mac’s department, and Jack is out of time. Every second is precious when Mac is bleeding his life away.

There’s a body on the floor of the room when Jack shoves the door open. Blond hair, pale skin, and blue shirt coated in blood. Jack doesn’t see movement. He covers the distance in a second and crashes to his knees on the floor, reaching for Mac’s neck with shaking hands.

The kid’s deathly cold under his fingers, and he can’t feel a pulse.  _ No, no, no. _ And then he catches it, weak and stuttering, but still there. Mac whimpers softly and blinks. 

“Hey, kid, it’s me. You ready to go home?” 

Jack picks the kid up, cradling Mac’s shivering body against his chest. “It’s okay, kid, I got you.” Mac, clearly in shock, curls closer to Jack’s warmth, wincing and hissing when the movement jars his wound. 

“Don’t you ever do this again,” Jack scolds as he hurries down the hall, trying not to jostle Mac any more than he absolutely has to. Mac mumbles something incoherent. When they reach the air vent, Riley’s already throwing down the rope harness. Jack’s no Mac, but he can tie some decent knots. He slips into the rig he’s made and Riley drops the other end of the rope, run around a pipe so she can pull while Jack also does some of the work. It feels like  it takes too long, but then he’s pulling himself onto the roof and they’re running for the helipad and the two choppers on it. Jack takes a moment to be grateful so many bad guys seem to like owning private transportation as he and Riley jump in and he fires up the chopper. 

There’s movement on the roof, and a couple armed goons are firing at them, but Jack angles away from them and then they’re airborne and out of range. He glances at the back where Riley’s putting pressure on Mac’s wound and tries to coax as much speed as he can out of the chopper. They’re running out of time. 

* * *

When Mac wakes up, it’s to the sadly familiar smell of antiseptic, the collection of sounds that is so distinct to a hospital, and a rough hand holding his in a tight grip. He squeezes back, and glances at Jack sitting in a plastic chair beside the bed.

Jack shakes his head. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, kid.”

“Won’t.” Mac knows it’s a stupid promise. If it comes down to his life or Jack’s, he’s always going to choose Jack. But he knows that Jack feels the same way about  _ him _ , so he lets it be. 

“You better not. Cause if you get killed I’m gonna figure out a way to bring you back to life so I can kill you myself,” Jack says, and he’s smiling, so it’s gonna be okay now.

“I knew you were comin’,” Mac manages before he starts drifting again. That’s the thing about saving Jack. As long as Jack’s alive, he’ll make sure Mac stays alive.  _ As long as we have each other, it’s gonna be just fine.  _


End file.
